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Fatkini

6.7.2012

Gabi Gregg is a beautiful woman, and I love her Fatkini pictures and her spirit. Let’s all put on bikinis and take pictures!!! It’s gorgeous, it’s empowering and it’s about time we celebrated and enjoyed our bodies and our selves. Why not be cool when the sun threatens to take over the whole sky? Why not vamp it up in a two piece, allow some time to find shelter in the shade, easy and free, pretty and pleasing, reclining and relaxing in what could practically be our undies? Exposure to the sun’s rays (within reason of course as they can still be pretty dangerous so don’t skimp on sunblock) is delightful and one of the true blissful attributes of summer. We should take our pleasure and document it, as we all have a right to joy no matter what size we are. If you have a body, you deserve to be happy in it, and that is that.

I am spending my summer in Atlanta, where the weather would be unbearable if I literally were not almost naked all the time. I usually do a bikini bottom and a little t-shirt just to protect all my tattoos from the sun, but I will wear this even when I am not going for a swim! To me – it’s proper attire everywhere! I just wore this ensemble on The View! Why shouldn’t I wear a bikini, and more importantly, why shouldn’t I wear a bikini on TV in front of millions of viewers? It’s hot outside!! it’s hot inside. I am hot, inside and out – so there.

There are many positive comments for Gabi and all her deliciously lovely unclad friends, but there are also those who are saying the photos “promote unhealthy weight”? What is an ‘unhealthy weight’? and also, what the hell is ‘promoting unhealthy weight’ supposed to mean? If we don’t adhere to certain societal standards, we shouldn’t take pictures of ourselves and post them online? Are we not allowed to witness our own reflection, much less enjoy the summer – the water and the sand, the lengthy days and heated nights, the beaches and the barbecues, June/July/August – the most sensual season, truly, as there are few gentle pastimes greater than casually eating a cool slice of watermelon poolside while flicking the seeds at a sexy stranger, allowing the juice to drip down your graceful neck right into your prodigious cleavage – because it might be considered ‘unhealthy’?

Is thin always healthy? I am not sure if thinness is all you need to get through this life. I have seen some thin people who looked as if they wouldn’t survive a sneeze, so I wouldn’t say that size is a fair indication of health or lack thereof. Perhaps we would all like to change something about ourselves, whether it is weight or height or proportion or age or skin/hair color or even race – but we are merely a product not only of our own collective decisions but also many made before us, before we were even born, and for this, we are what we are. Is it not right to just enjoy and accept who we are at this very moment?

My own relentless obsession with thinness has proved far more detrimental to my health than anything else. In my twenties, I became a terrible alcoholic, not because I needed to drink myself to the brink of insanity for the sake of drunkenness, but because I was so hungry I didn’t know what else to do. I starved my body and drank solely to kill my unfathomable hunger, and in doing so, I nearly killed myself. I took numerous drugs – uppers/downers/inners/outers not to get high, but in order to keep myself from eating.

Food was and is and will be forever my true jones, the drug of choice that will trump all my choices, my eternal nemesis and what I dream of every night, the monkey on my ever widening back. It’s a waste of drugs and drink – because I didn’t appreciate these things on their own merits nor did I ever get truly high – rather I used them as escape route, trying to circumvent my stomach by overloading my nervous system.

All of my self destructive behavior can be traced back to wanting to be thinner, to beat down my appetite with chemical weapons. I waged war on my growling stomach, tried to immobilize the forces within me that existed solely to keep me alive. You can’t win when you battle with yourself. All you do is lose everything, except weight.

I have made peace with my body, and in the most extraordinary of ironies, I have now a body that my younger helplessly addicted, ravaged, starved, drunken, immobilized by workouts self could have only dreamed of having. I may not be as thin as the models in the magazines or other girls on tv, but I look good to myself, which is enough for me. To come to a place where I don’t avoid reflective surfaces – wanting to evade proof that I am who I am as I judged myself relentlessly for being fat/ugly/whatever/anything but beautiful – is a kind of heaven on earth.

All my gratitude to Gabi, the fatkini, mirrors, summer and life. I have learned the hard way to appreciate what I have, what others have, what I have lost and what I have found in all my 43 years (!) and I am just trying to pass it on and put it in a 2 piece.

If fat guys like me can show some skin without blowback (though I am still self-conscious in this fat-hating environment), then fat women should too. Regardless of blowback, fuck the rules, the summer sun is to be enjoyed by all, not just the “beautiful” people.

Margaret, I love you. Seriously. I am often a silent reader, I should comment far more often than I do. But you as a person, your words, they move me so much.
Liking and comming to terms with your body has got nothing to do with weight. I have experienced this myself. I am one of those who would not survive winter. My metabolism is crazy, I could constantly eat. I don´t feel myself getting hungry, but when I do, oh boy…I have to eat within 20 minutes or I´ll pass out. I get grumpy, I cannot concentrate. My body doesn´t offer a lot of energy storage.
So yes: Don´t be thin. Everyone has to stop obsessing about something that is just a temporary fashion. The ideal weight changes so much, I really don´t need to tell you.
What does not change is character. True character. And the love that you have for yourself. Once you have discovered it, it won´t leave you. You remind me of this so very often.

I´d sit around in a bikini with you anytime, because I won´t feel like being judged. Thank you for being you.

thankyou dear Margaret! I”ve read your wonderful book- this is a war we are waging against fatphobia and the multi-billion dollar diet industry.
If you have a Kindle, please read Paul Campos’ “The Obesity Myth”. It’s revolutionary and oh, so true.
Love you, girl! Let us all spread the love for all sizes and shapes around! And then get on with our lives! Karen Nyere

Dearest Margaret,
Thankyou for this and your great book. The true health crisis is women with eating disorders that are encouraged by the dieting industry and the culture. Diets don’t work for most people- psychological and physiological factors kick in that make you gain it all and then some back. Be here now, and get on with your gorgeous life, my friends! Love Karen Nyere

lovely margaret. but what is unhealthy weight?? having to work with a production crew that you hate. find them putrid because they cannot take ownership for producing homophobic, bigoted, fraudulent, disgusting, toxic, diseased, putrid, did i say homophobic, culturally oppressive ignorant garbage. body size?? who cares. but, when grossly obese people who are not out walking across the country because they would rather be part of slothful, lazy, cheap gin and xanax pathetic programs while wondering why this society has such challenges with unproductive paintings of cheezy brooklyn hipsters posing for the studio presses but doing little on the road outside of their tour engagements — unhealthy weight?? waiting around for a bunch of bigoted morons to move beyond 15 years of pathological shit. thus, i don’t read the news any longer as the french, swiss, english, spanish, italians, dutch and japanese (who were able to cut through the crap) were far more informative of the fraud and aggro garbage that has been streaming from the lairs of junkies, alcoholics, and pedophiles as this winter showcase with selfish cunts in miami beach.

love your post — love food — we have our bodies, but unhealthy weight is a showcase of cunts who have heavy metaphysical posturing wasting plenty rather than taking ownership for a negative showcase of incredibly cheap and selfish behavior.

p.s. that piece on the view was hilarious. so much more funny than trying to flag down people to help me with an adorable fawn abandoned by its mother that i just found on the side of the road and was hoping that it could be rescued. so much more funny than people hiking up to one of my favorite campsites in the wilderness just to leave exorbitant amounts of garbage all over the place along with their random piles of toilet paper that they couldn’t drag back to their campfire. so, body weight who cares, but there is a HUGE matter of weight in this culture right now as to why it is no longer my home and won’t be the case. too many people sitting by to a showcase of issues such as civil rights abuses — we shall overcome and much has been done, but i recognize what many minority groups face and i know that many people are worse off than some of us, but that is all the MORE reason why walking, flying, hitching, railing, trucking across the country was about other people’s stories as well. it was not a narcissistic masturbatory experience but the hate and bigotry limited so much and that is very unhealthy weight and nothing i wanted to promote and thus, why my spirit is not in the united states and will not be here this summer. only here in body — heavy or light because love is not a word i associate with the past 15 years in this country.

You are a talented and amazing writer, and funny as hell (seriously. Fuck you, Adam Carolla). I just did a somewhat related photo challenge on my blog. Thank you for being such a powerful voice for size acceptance.